The Road Ahead

Honduras After the Election Fraud. Testimony of Berta Oliva, Coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared (COFADEH)

The general coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras (COFADEH), Berta Oliva, told La Radio Sur news website that after Sunday’s election fraud, the future of social activists in Honduras is at higher risk.

In the show “Mientras Tanto y por si Acaso”, Oliva said most irregularities were verified at the polls and in the vote counting. “The worst fraud happened at the polling stations. Some votes for the Free Party were annulled”, which is the opposition party, she explained.

The candidate for the Free Party, Xiomara Castro, announced she would wait until Friday to announce her party’s position, which filed reports of fraud.

Oliva said the Supreme Electoral Court of Honduras backed some of the fraud by trying to be exempted from responsibility. “The Honduran people suffered the worst blow because it was convinced that it was time to defeat the perpetrators of violence without violence. We will continue supporting the people, by reporting the facts and condemning the institutionalized corruption in the country, even if our lives are in danger”, said the general coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras.

“We still have a long way to go and a lot of suffering to bear, because we have a very hard task ahead of us. Now we will review all the reports of the international delegations to see what we can do, if they let us do it”, she said.

Some of the fraud included the registration of people who are alive as dead in the voting records, issuing discount cards, lack of transparency in the funding of campaigns and strong military presence at the elections, according to the observers of the International Federation for Human Rights.

Likewise, many Hondurans were deprived from voting by declaring them dead. Some of them had even voted in the primary elections.